City-sanctioned homeless campground coming to Oakland

Shawn Moses walks behind the sign he created at a homeless encampment on Northgate Avenue, where he has lived for about three years.

Shawn Moses walks behind the sign he created at a homeless...

With the explosion of tent encampments reaching crisis level in Oakland, city officials are looking to turn an empty lot into a sanctioned homeless campground — complete with sanitation and other services.

“We are looking at a couple of sites in West Oakland,” said Joe DeVries, an assistant to the city administrator, who works on homeless issues. “We hope to have something lined up in the next couple of months.”

The camp would accommodate 40 tents and probably be overseen by staffers from a nonprofit under a contract with the city.

The goal is to create something like a low-cost version of San Francisco’s Navigation Centers, with support services staffers on hand to help steer camp residents into counseling, rehab and housing.

Oakland is becoming increasingly confounded about how to handle the spread of tent camps, including some where garbage is spilling into streets. At one camp near Interstate 880, we recently counted 70 tents and other structures — and spotted traffic cones that the homeless had put in place to block off part of the street.

Not that motorists always take notice. “A car just missed me,” said Roger Harris, who lives in a tent with his girlfriend, who is six months pregnant. “It’s crazy, and it doesn’t seem like the city is doing anything.”

“We know it’s a problem,” DeVries said. “We need to find a way to get them to push it back.”

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

A homeless encampment on Northgate Avenue below Interstate 980 in Oakland is jam-packed with the campers’ belongings and refuse.

A homeless encampment on Northgate Avenue below Interstate 980 in...

At one three-block encampment on Wood Street in the West Oakland warehouse district, the city has installed barricades to separate tents from traffic. It’s also brought in portable toilets, in hopes of minimizing health hazards in the camp.

Those hazards aren’t coming just from the homeless. “People start dumping trash at the camps,” DeVries said.

The city routinely sends in cleanup crews to remove the garbage. For the most part, however, Oakland has taken a hands-off approach to the encampments so long as they stay clear of parks, schools or streets with heavy foot traffic.

One big problem is money. Neither Oakland nor neighboring Berkeley, which has also seen an explosion in tents in the past year, has the resources to deal with the problem.

“We spent $17 million in direct services for the homeless and millions more on enforcements and cleanups,” said Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin. “It’s really a drain on our resources.”

Berkeley is also looking into turning an empty lot into a tent encampment, complete with showers and services. At the Berkeley camp, however, the city would provide permanent tentlike structures.

“You couldn’t just come in and plop down your tent,” Arreguin said.

Oakland has already tried a smaller version of what both it and Berkeley are considering. At a city-sanctioned encampment under Interstate 580 near the Emeryville border, complete with toilets and barricades, 40 people have been camping while the city works to find them housing.

The city is about to shut down the camp. “We have moved about 30 people into housing and hope to have the rest of them moved by the end of the month,” DeVries said.

The flip side is that whenever someone moved out, someone else moved in to take their place — which was not part of the city’s plan.

What happens to the new camp residents remains to be seen, but DeVries was firm: “The camp will be closing.”

Just as the city’s new official camp gets ready to open.

Welcome to the new homeless reality.

Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi at a remote meeting of the UC Regents at UC Davis in 2011.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi at a remote meeting of the UC...

Katehi ka-ching: The University of California spent almost $1 million for a private law firm to investigate the alleged wrongdoing by former UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi that led to her resignation in August.

The investigation was conducted by the San Francisco law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe — and was headed by Melinda Haag, former U.S. attorney in San Francisco.

“After taking into account the discounted hourly billing rates and other fee accommodations that the firm agreed to, the final cost to UC will be $988,142.75 for Orrick’s fees and expenses,” UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein said via email.

“The funds used to pay for the investigation come from the presidential endowment, which does not include any state or tuition dollars,” Klein said.

Katehi resigned from her $420,000-a-year position after questions were raised about her serving on outside boards and about her efforts to “scrub” the Internet of stories relating to the embarrassing pepper spraying of protesters at a peaceful demonstration at UC Davis in 2011.

UC President Janet Napolitano asked Katehi to step aside. When she refused, Napolitano ordered the Haag investigation — which, she later told the Board of Regents, found “numerous instances” in which Katehi “was not candid either with me, the press or the public.”

After the report was released, Katehi resigned and returned to her teaching position at Davis.

“All of this could have been avoided had Katehi resigned as chancellor of UC Davis as President Napolitano had asked,” Klein said.

San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandross